Here's Why I Already Hate the Toyota 86 Shooting Brake

Toyota has heard the cries of the auto enthusiast internet. It has answered our frenzied, incessant cry for that most perfect automobile: A lightweight, simple, balanced rear-driver with a naturally-aspirated engine, a blessed manual transmission, and that holiest of body styles, the two-door mini-wagon. The Toyota 86 Shooting Brake is real.

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And I hate it. Or at least, I hate a very specific part of the design, a frustrating detail that ruins what could have been daringly great.

Ideally, this machine should stroke every sensuous zone of the modern car enthusiast's brain. Just look at the nameplate. Toyota isn't calling this a "hatchback," or a "liftback," or a "grand coupe" or "touring" or "GT" or any other made-up terminology that would be unique to this one specific vehicle. No, the folks at Toyota went straight for our collective soft spot. They called it a Shooting Brake.

Toyota knows exactly what it's doing with this name. "Shooting brake" is one of those annoyingly specific terms that gearheads have latched on to, a European-sounding name for a very specific type of car that was built for a niche automotive task that lost its relevance right around the advent of paved roads.

But if the Toyota 86 Shooting Brake won't actually be used to transport British aristocracy and their rifles and hunting dogs to go shoot pheasants, it should at least offer some of the practicality associated with the "shooting brake" name. And I'm not seeing that here.

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Look at that preposterous roofline. It can't decide if it's a lazy fastback, or a flat roof that just sort of gave up in a shrug. It's not rakish enough to be swoopy, and not upright enough to be quirky. Honda CR-Z fans will love it, if any of them are still awake.

My real beef here, though, is that back glass, or what purports to be the back glass. Take a close look at those rear hatch cut-lines. The outer corners of that dramatic-looking rear windshield shape are nothing more than glossy black plastic. Fake window alert:

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Fake plastic doodads masquerading as evocatively-shaped window glass are a pandemic in modern car design. This deception always looks chintzy, like the matte-black roundy-triangles on the rear doors of budget sedans, as exemplified by the first generations of the Chevy Cruze and Chrysler 200.

It's a lie, and it's even more egregious than things like the fake plastic fender vents that the Toyota 86 (and seemingly every other car) so proudly sports. An ersatz air intake is dumb, but it's a white lie that doesn't really hamper the driving experience.

But take a close look at the Toyota 86 Shooting Brake's rear window. Its vertical footprint is hilariously short, and from what we can see in these artfully-illuminated press photos, the 86 doesn't benefit from the upper glass panel at the rear of the roof that makes rearward visibility in the Prius, the CR-Z, and the Hyundai Veloster at least marginally acceptable.

And once you take into account the metal structure of the hatch itself (as can be barely glimpsed in the video teaser of the car), the actual see-through portion of the glass is likely to rival the footprint of a nicely-stuffed cheesesteak. You can see why the designers wanted to visually extend that back glass. I'm surprised they didn't stretch those shiny plastic triangles all the way to the door handles.

The thing we love about the Toyota 86 (and its Subaru twin) is the irrepressible honesty of the thing. Among the hybrid-powered, engine-noise synthesizing, self-shifting, torque-vectoring wondermobiles on our streets today, the simple joyfulness of the Toyobaru twins is delightfully refreshing. They're rewardingly analog in a glumly digital market. It's no wonder you see them in throngs at autocrosses and track days.

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A big part of the quirky charm of our favorite shooting brakes—like the Volvo P1800ES and the BMW M Coupe—is the odd combination of svelte lower bodywork and a blocky roofline. Style and practicality, all in one package. The Toyota 86 Shooting Brake, sadly, doesn't seem to have too much of either. Traditionalists looking for a true embodiment of a pre-war English sportsman's wagon will have to keep hunting.

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